


The Pickles Chronicles

by marie-bernard (Kayce)



Category: Metalocalypse
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-09-19
Updated: 2011-09-28
Packaged: 2017-10-23 20:51:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/254846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kayce/pseuds/marie-bernard





	1. Story One - "The Hippie Chick"

  
Later he’d blame it, by turns, on Nathan for being an idiot, Fat Steve for being a greedy prick, Charles for trusting them to go around unsupervised and even himself, once or twice, for being…well, himself. When he was at the exact right point of drunk or stoned just enough, he didn’t blame anyone at all, at those times he couldn’t decide between random, luckless, and absolutely meaningless chance or some kinda big cosmic fate shit that mortals weren’t meant to understand, but right now - sitting in the ass end of a pickup truck older than he was and watching his Zippo flame in the wind - Pickles thought it was all the fucking hippie chick’s fault.

 She really wasn’t, but she had danced around the room, staring at her hands like God had just made ‘em for her and calling everything a ‘righteous groove’ so he instantly dubbed her that in his mind and since he never got her name she was doomed forever to be just ‘hippie chick’ every time he thought about her.

The first thing she did when they got to Fat Steve’s house was pull down her panties and show them all her labial piercings. She might have been ‘the freaky chick’ or even ‘that fucked up chick’ if Pickles had been thinking then instead of staring dumbly and getting grossed out by her twat, they were pierced, all right, and the goofy broad had a lock, an actual goddamned little bitty padlock, through both the rings.

Straight off Skwisgaar offered to try and pick the lock for her, Pickles shushed him and glanced at Steve but all that fat fucker did was laugh and tell him to go ahead and try. Hippie chick pulled up her drawers pretty quick, which Pickles was grateful for, but then the dancing and the righteous bullshit had started.

Nathan’s hair was a righteous groove; Skwisgaar’s guitar was a righteous groove.  So were his own hair, Murderface’s knife and Toki’s bicep.  She was annoying but easy to disregard for Pickles, he knew a broad on a mescaline trip when he saw one, but the others looked kinda smug, except for Toki who just looked embarrassed, until she leaned down to watch her and Stevie’s kitten worrying over a dead mouse it’d been messing with since they got there and declared it a righteous groove, too. Everyone else looked crestfallen but Pickles noticed that Nate really warmed up to her after that.

She sat on the singer’s lap and started blathering about ‘special power places’ off in the desert, Pickles mostly tuned her out, he was kinda busy trying to cut a deal that didn’t involve at least one of them going down on the hippie chick while Steve filmed it. He was sure Skwisgaar would do it in a second, but Pickles kinda liked Steve, he was the only old face from back in the day he’d been able to get in touch with, and he really didn’t want Charles to send a couple of hoodies out to his house later to off him and his dopey old lady just ‘cause they liked kinky sex and his lead guitarist had never seen a pussy he didn’t want to play with, locked up or not.  

He finally paid, in cash only, for the buttons and the ‘shine and they got the hell out of there, it wasn’t until they were in the Hummer and on their way back to Vegas that he realized Nathan had been making a deal of his own. Or, more like, a really bad plan.

 “So, we’re going back to your guy’s house tomorrow.”

“What the fuck for, man? We got everything we needed today; trust me, there’s more than enough peyote back there to keep you fucked up all day tomorrow and beyond.”

“I’m gonna get some sacred sand.”

Nathan raised an eyebrow and nodded his head at him, like he expected him to be impressed with that bit of information, and then looked back toward the road. Pickles sighed and rubbed his forehead, he wondered if maybe he should be behind the wheel instead of Nathan, driving drunk had to be safer than driving while you were tripping balls.

“What the fuck are you talking about? Did you take something back at Stevie’s?” Pickles asked him.

“Take some…what? No. You know that chick that was there? The weird one?”

“Yeah, Nate.  She was the _only_ chick that was there, what’d she give you?  
”  
“Nothing, goddamnit! She’s gonna take me to a special place tomorrow. To collect sand that’s sacred.”

Pickles could tell he’d already pissed the big guy off so he let the subject drop and listened to Skwisgaar and Murderface argue about which was more useful  for taking girls to special places – lock picking skills or lube - that lead to a heated discussion about whether or not it was gay, border-line gay, or only gay-ish to fuck a girl in the ass, by the time they were fighting about how far down you could legitimately go while eating pussy before you had to call it tossing salad Pickles was turned around in his seat having a paper-rock-scissors tournament with Toki and he’d forgotten all about his resolve to catch Nathan in a better mood when they got back to the hotel and talk him out of his stupid plan.

By the next afternoon he would deeply, deeply regret that he could be so easily distracted by roshambo and rim jobs.  



	2. Reminisce - "The Guys and Groupies"

  
Pickles knew Fat Steve from his LA days, back then he was the guy with the good acid. He supposedly had an in with the Hell’s Angels from San Berdoo that were running a tri-state drug ring down south, or so Pickles had heard – not from the guy himself, Pickles didn’t know if Fat Steve was in or out, but either way the dude was at least smart enough to keep his mouth shut about his sources.

Snakes ‘n Barrels had tried partying with the Angels a few times, it damn sure sounded badass to all the poseurs around the scene who liked to do nothing but talk the talk, but the second time they’d seen a dude get shot they’d decided maybe the HAMC did a little more walking the walk than they were comfortable with, thank you very much. By that time none of the band had been much for walking, anyway, and having a connection with _the guy_ was a lot more useful to them than being able to tell Rikki Kixx that they’d seen a man take a bullet and then get up to pull another brew off the kegger.

Instead of walking, SnB was spending a good amount of their time waiting for the guy. There was practically a different dude for everything, one for what you snorted, one for what you smoked, one to get you up, one to put you down, no matter which guy they were talking about, when one of them was out of what he needed _that_ guy became  the guy. Candy was always waiting on the guy or Bullets was going to meet the guy and then Tony would refuse to get out of bed because there was nothing to do until _the guy_ called him back. Pickles had sneered at them about it, but he’d been just as bad as the rest of them, really, only difference was Pickles’ guy ran the liquor store down on the corner and was always waiting for _him_.

Steve had peeled off with the rest of the guys when they’d copped wise to the fact that while the band still loved to toot and shoot as much as they could lay their hands on, what they couldn’t lay their hands on was enough green to pay for the good times anymore. Hell, looking back on it, Pickles realized that the guys had their disastrous financial situation figured out even before they did.

Some of the smarter groupies and hangers-on had also started to find other places to group and hang and before Pickles knew it he’d gone from pouring back Courvoisier straight outta the bottle to barely scrounging enough change to pay for a half-pint of Turkey and, if he could afford it, a cola to go with it. Not Coke, mind you, people in his predicament couldn’t splurge on a can of the name-brand stuff, for Pickles it was cola if he had an extra quay-dog or chase it with water if he was flat broke. He was never too broke to afford the Turkey, though, that’d never happened even once, no matter what he’d had to do.

Even when things were at their worst they never got too dire, he didn’t have to pull a Private Idaho or anything, Pickles always had a couple of girls that were willing to put him up and ease the skids until the next big thing came along, which he’d eventually started to doubt would happen but neither of the girls ever did, or at least they didn’t say so to his face, but come along it did in the form of an unexpected visit from Mr. C.F. Ofdensen.  He might be an asshole, but he had a long memory for the few, very few - like two - people who’d helped to soften the blow, instead of kicking him while he was down, and one right thing, possibly the only right thing, he’d done when Dethklok started making the real big money was to be sure they had a little something put aside to keep the wolf away, no matter how bad he might fuck things up for himself.

He’d called Kelly when he found out they were gonna spend a week in Las Vegas, Pickles figured if any of the old crew were still around he could take a jet over to LA, party for a night (or two, depending on the quality of the dope the guys were able to score these days) and jet back in time to enjoy the casino with the rest of the band. He’d been pleasantly surprised when she told him that Fat Steve had relocated to the desert somewhere south of Vegas where he was brewing his own moonshine and selling peyote he got hauled up from one of the rezes in ‘Zonie. He’d toyed with the idea of flying over just to hang out with Kel for a while, but she had an eight year old of uncertain parentage and now that Tony was out of the picture Pickles didn’t want to put the wrong idea in Kelly’s head or the kid’s.

When Snakes ‘n Barrels was still together Kelly hadn’t been able to decide if she’d rather be with him or with Tony or with both of them at the same time, sometimes literally, but after the band broke up it was Pickles that she’d dragged home like a stray cat and Tony who got cast aside to fend for himself. Pickles thought that probably had a lot to do with the fact that his dick usually worked like it was supposed to, when he was conscious, while Tony’s drug of choice and the places he was putting it were just about guaranteed to kill a boner.

Tony would still come around any time he was a little bit clean and all three of them would fuck like rabid squirrels, and Kelly swore the kid got started the last time it’d happened, but Pickles wasn’t so sure - Kelly was a groupie, after all. Girls like her weren’t known for their faithfulness and chastity and really, Pickles wouldn’t have wanted her any other way, but he knew there were plenty of times when he was passed out in the middle of the day or so fucking sloppy he was disgusting, that she’d gone to get her itch scratched by somebody who was still _somebody_.

Kelly knew she was no kinda angel and she accepted Pickles for exactly what he was, too. One of the plusses to shacking up with a groupie was that they weren’t too judgey if you went to check the mail naked and scared the old lady next door or lost your third dishwasher job in a row ‘cause you mixed up the dish soap with the ant poison. The other plus to living with a groupie? Kelly - exactly like every other groupie he’d ever been with - could give a wake-up blowjob that’d make you forget your fucking name.  Which was pretty much all Pickles ever tried to do back then, when you were a fallen super-star that couldn’t hold down a job scrubbing out pots and pans at the nearest Denny's remembering who you used to be was usually the most painful part of the day.  



	3. Story Two - "A Sharp Dressed Man"

The suits were Murderface’s idea to begin with, Pickles had tried to get through to him that dressing like the Blues Brothers was not metal, or even cool, but Toki had been almost giddy about all of them dressing in matching outfits, Nathan had jumped in as soon as he saw how much Pickles didn’t want to, and Skwisgaar didn’t give a shit one way or the other, so, with Charles alongside, the five of them were waiting for the elevator that night wearing identical monkey suits and looking for all the world like they’d stepped out of some fucking stupid Tarantino movie.

Murderface even had a fedora on, he’d tried to slip on a pair of sunglasses, too, but Pickles told him if he didn’t take them off he’d punch him in the eye and break them, just as they were about to leave Pickles noticed a suspicious bulge behind the bassist’s right lapel and he’d refused to walk out the door until Toki held his arms so he could grab the shitty knock-off Oakleys from the other man’s inside pocket and fling them off the balcony.

Ofdensen had been waiting for them in the hallway and Pickles could tell right away that Charlie thought they looked stupid, too. He wouldn’t say so in a million years and he was too classy to let it show on his face, but if you were quick enough and savvy enough, and Pickles was too much of both for his own comfort or he wouldn’t be drunk all the time, you could see the look flash across his eyes really brief-like before he carefully made them go as blank as the rest of his expression.

It was times like this that he envied their manager just a little bit, Pickles knew for a fact that it’d cost him two sawbucks for _his_ matching outfit to get ‘lost’ somewhere between the airport and the hotel but since he wasn’t actually a member of the band he got away with sporting the same boring, bland and non-asshole-ish grey suit he always did.

As soon as they crowded into the elevator and the doors slid shut Murderface, who’d been pissing and crying about his sunglasses since they left the suite, was flashing Pickles a cocky grin and adjusting his fedora, instead of the usual vapid muzak  they could hear the distinctive bass line and blaring horns of ‘The Peter Gunn Theme’.

“Ishn’t it great? Charlesh got ‘em to play it just for ush.”

The others looked happy about it, too, Pickles doubted that Skwisgaar and Toki even knew the tune, but it was still something that’d been made to happen just for them, because they were Dethklok, and that was always to be considered a good thing. Pickles’ disgust must have been obvious, he sure as hell wasn’t too classy to let it show, and Charles cleared his throat and offered him a sympathetic look.

“It’s…ah…just for this evening, the music will be reset tomorrow…by noon.”

Pickles resolved to avoid trips up the elevator for the next twelve hours, fuck it – he was already flying high and he had a pocket full of peyote buttons, and headed off toward the slot machines.  
   
From past experience he knew fucking around with the slots or gawping at the roulette wheel were the gaming activities best suited to him when he was on a trip, if he was only drinking he’d usually go for blackjack and if he was coked up Pickles was a fucking monster playing seven card stud, but on the mesc or the psili it was always better to just relax and watch the pretty colors fly by. He was also carrying a forty-four ounce tumbler with ‘Pukles’ emblazoned on the side that was filled to the brim with moonshine and he was still straight enough to realize that the standing and the jostling, but mostly the standing, at the roulette table were not a prime idea for him tonight.

Nine hours later Nathan found Pickles with his forehead pressed against one of the nickel slots, the giant mug Toki had painted for his birthday clutched between his knees and his change bucket underneath his stool filled with…piss.  He grabbed a handful of the drummer’s dreadlocks and pulled his head back then let it fall forward against the slot machine again, Pickles’ mouth opened marginally wider but there was no discernable effect on his state of consciousness.

Nathan got better results when he leaned down next to his head and shouted.

“Wake the fuck up! Dude, you pissed in your money.”

“Wha…? Oh, yeah, uh…Charlie. Charlie’s fault, asked ‘em to catheterize me an’ he wouldn’t.”

“That’s… real fucking gross. Now get your ass up!”

“Jeez, quit yelling in my ear! Where’s the fucking fire?”

Nathan glanced around the casino floor as though hoping one of the patrons would suddenly burst into flames; when none of the regular jack-offs spontaneously combusted right away he turned back to Pickles in disappointment.

“I don’t think there is one…it’d be cool, though. Now come on, we’re going to get some sand!”

“Aw, fuck, Nathan, that’s such a stupid fucking idea, just go without me, dude.”

“Am I gonna have to carry you, or you gonna get up and walk?”

Pickles moaned in painful resignation and, with a steadying hand on his slot machine, eased slowly up from the stool - only because he knew for a fact that Nathan actually _would_ carry him, and not in the one arm around him push-pull  kinda thing that worked on a recalcitrant drunk, he’d either sling Pickles over his shoulder or pick him up bridal-style, both of which were too humiliating for a grown man to endure, no matter if you were too wasted to remember it when it happened and only saw the pictures later.

On their way through the casino he tried to think of something to say that would get Nathan to abandon his dumbass plan and just go back to gambling, the thinking might have gone better for him if he wasn’t distracted by the fact that his tumbler was bone dry and, except for a few crumbs, his peyote pocket was completely empty, before he knew it they were standing in front of the Hummer and the only thing left on Pickles’ mind was the sheer horror of rolling through miles and miles of wasteland with the rest of his band mates along and without any mind altering substances available.

When Toki popped the back door open for him with a sunny smile and a hearty wave Pickles put a hand over his eyes and fought manfully not to break down and cry. He was in a special Hell that was painted in a garish Vegas color scheme and Toki was Satan, it was the only explanation.

As he climbed into the back seat, his poor sober brain considering then rejecting a hastily formed plan of doing a tuck-and-roll out the door once they hit the parking lot and shouting ‘kidnapping’, Pickles saw what was in the cargo hold and he didn’t even try to restrain his elated screams. They’d forgotten to tell one of the Gears to get the rest of their haul out of the Hummer - the back was still half-filled with quart jars of corn liquor and bags of peyote buttons. He grabbed Toki into a bear hug and then shook him vigorously back and forth by the arms; poor, confused Toki could only gape in astonishment at Pickles’ babbling.

“I’m saved, Toki! Jesusmarymotherofgod, I’m fucking saved!”

By the time they left the strip Pickles had regained his calm, and his buzz, thanks to half the contents of one of the mason jars that he’d added a few of the cactus tops to yesterday afternoon. He was still stuck with the other guys on a stupid fucking trip into the desert to get Nathan’s sacred sand, but Pickles figured there was nothing in this world so stupid it couldn’t be tolerated - if he were given the right amount of mescaline and some moonshine to wash it down with.  



	4. Special Bonus Ficlet - "On the Road, Again"

“God, again! Go in one of Pickles’ jars or something.”

“No fucking way, dude, I’ll get fucked up and drink that shit.”

“Is not shits, I has to pisskingks.”

“You know, urine is schterile when it comesch out of your body.”

“I don’t give a fuck; I ain’t drinking his fucking piss!”

“Oh, boys, now I has to go, too.”

“Fuck, Toki! Fine, fine, we’re pulling over.”

“Oh, yeah, you pulls over for Toki buts tells me to goes in de jar!”

“Just get out and take a fucking leak already.”

~O~O~O~O~

“Why are we all still wearing these stupid fucking suits?”

“Nathan says you don’t has time to change, so you has to wear your clothes you has already on and I keep mine on, too, so we can be twinkles!”

“Twinkies, Toki, two Twinkies look alike.”

“Yeah, what I says – twinkles.”

“They were my fucking idea! If you two asscholes get to wear your schuits then I get to wear mine.”

“Skwisgaar?”

“What? I not even has de coats and de necks ties t’ing. Besides, yous not leavingks me out.”

“Did you see the way Charles was looking at me when we got on the elevator last night? I fucking look great.”

“….”

~O~O~O~O~

“This is the last time, Skwisgaar! I’m not fucking kidding, we’re not stopping again!”

“Is not my faults, I t’ink Pickle's moonskins give me bladders inflect…frect…f..f…fect…ingks.”

~O~O~O~O~

“No, you can’t throw bomb, it’s cheating.”

“How is it cheats?”

“It’s two-to-one with just paper, rock and scissors, when you add bomb in it fucks up the odds.”

“Fine, we play different games. Oh! Slug-bug green!”

“Ow, that hurt, you fucker!”

“Toki, no hitting, we talked about this.”

“Yous no fun, Nathan.”

~O~O~O~O~

♫ _Momma said the pistol is the devil’s right hand, the devil’s right hand, the devil’s right hand, Momma says the pistol is_ ♫

“Hey, Charles, what’s up?”

“We’re driving…”

“We didn’t wanna stay in Vegas; we’re driving out to the desert.”

“Well, we’re doing it again today.”

“’Cause I want to.”

“Just ‘cause I want to.”

“’Cause I wanna go get something special.”

“Something special.”

“Just special.”

“It’s sacred sand.”

“’Cause the sand at the craft store is not sacred.”

“Uhh… well, I wouldn’t wanna go see a priest.”

“Oh… I didn’t know that.”

“So? I don’t even know what that is.”

“Oh… uhh… I want sand that’s already sacred, so there!”

“Later.”

“Later this afternoon.”

“Fine, later this evening.”

“Shhhh shhhh rawr grr grrr I can’t hear you, Charles! You’re breaking up! Shhhrrr grrr Gotta go. Bye!”

“Did you guys know three of the Klokateers are Voodoo priests and another one’s a necro…mancer? That means a really fucking brutal magician.”

~O~O~O~O~

“Holy crap, dude, I think you should start drinking more water, there’s stuff floating around in this.”

“Gods, just t’rows it out alreadies!"

“I’m just saying, that’s fucking weird looking, we should take it back to the lab or something.”

“Did you know that when urine decomposches it turnsh into ammonia? Thatsh like bleach, that meansh when we were drinking bleach, it wasch like drinking decomposed pissch, you could let that rot and it’d be the schame thing.”

“God! What the fuck do you keep bringing up drinking Skwisgaar’s pee for? Do you wanna drink it? Here, here you go, get a nice big drink of that, why dontcha?”

“Quit it, Pickles, sit the fuck down!  Hurry up and throw that shit out the window.”

“Is not shits…”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s your fucking piss, just shut up for a minute.” _SNICK_ “Idea for a song…a guy goes to Hell and all there is to drink is…uh…decomposed piss. Yeah.”

~O~O~O~O~

“I has to goes again.”

“Fuck!”


	5. Reminisce - "A Tale of a Fateful Trip"

The worst trip he’d been on before, that hadn’t been caused by bad dope, had been the disastrous boating trip with Seth when he was thirteen. They’d been at the marina dicking around when Seth had the brilliant idea to try and hot wire one of the party barges, Pickles hadn’t actually been hard to convince, but, as usual, the trouble had started with one of Seth’s ideas. Somehow his brother had managed to get the thing started and off they’d gone on their pleasure cruise.

Pickles’ first real epiphany that there was no God had come three years later when Darren Nelms had shown him how to jack a car and make sure he didn’t fry his own ass in the process; surely a loving creator would have let Seth die that day at the marina and spared his younger brother from so much pain, but thirteen year old Pickles didn’t know jackshit about crossing the wrong wires and was just relieved to be doing something with Seth that didn’t involve pain, humiliation or loogies.

Less than a half-hour into their stolen boat ride everything had gone to shit. Seth had been revving the barge’s motor, trying to ‘see how fast this fucking baby could fly’, which was, as Pickles had predicted, ‘not very’, when the engine had given a few coughs, then sputtered a time or two, before grinding to a dead silence. Pickles had expected to see some smoke billowing out, or at least smell something bad, when he leaned over the side to take a closer look, but as it turned out the answer to their troubles wasn’t in the back of the boat near the motor, it was right in front of Seth on the instrument panel - they’d run out of gas.

A quick rummage through the barge’s storage compartments turned up only one thing even mildly useful – a paddle, one wooden paddle that the boat’s owners probably used to push off from the shoreline or when they were grounded somewhere and not to actually power the fucking boat with.

They both knew they were in deep shit, but Seth assured his brother that they weren’t caught yet and there was always the slim chance that they could escape the looming shit-pile and, possibly, come out smelling like a rose on the other side. It was with this in mind that Seth directed Pickles to row the barge away from the marina and toward the opposite shore of the lake, at barely thirteen Pickles still had enough residual hero-worship and trust for his older brother that he just went with it when Seth designated Pickles as the rower, reasoning that, being shorter, he was closer to the water and wouldn’t have to reach as far with the paddle.  
   
They’d made it maybe two hundred yards, with Pickles sweating and roundly cursing both the beating sun and his pale Irish heritage, when the first clouds started to gather. He’d been nothing but relieved at first, maybe his sunburn would only keep him painfully bedridden for a day or two, instead of an entire week, and even the first few raindrops hadn’t been cause for alarm, but within ten minutes there was a regular monsoon hitting them and while the rain sheeting against his face might be painful, it was the lightning crashing overhead that had Pickles shaking so badly it was hard to keep a good grip on the paddle.

He managed to row them to one of the sandbars in the middle of the lake - a lot quicker than he thought was possible, too, it turned out fear of impending death was a much better motivator than fear of impending sunburn - when he’d gotten close enough to wade to solid ground Pickles jumped out and tied the barge off to one of the roots on an overhanging tree, then climbed back aboard to retrieve a couple of the life-preservers they hadn’t bothered to put on so they’d have some make shift rain shields, while Seth promptly abandoned ship and made for the tree line.

 Pickles joined his brother and they’d huddled together under the small trees in rain-soaked misery; he’d thought the sweltering sun was bad and the gale force precipitation even worse, but nothing mother nature had thrown at him so far was as horrible to Pickles as having to listen to Seth bitching and moaning for the next two and a half hours ‘cause he couldn’t light up one of his Marlboros.

Seth had been just as pleased as punch when he’d shown Pickles the unopened pack of cigarettes and as his younger brother held a life jacket over both of them, he ripped off the cellophane, dug out his lighter and then…nothing. Seth favored the kind of cheapo crack lighter he could swipe by the handful while Pickles distracted the clerk at the Seven-Eleven and the one he was using that day hadn’t fared well in the front pocket of his sopping wet blue jeans.

Having nothing better to do, Pickles had spent a good ten minutes timing it out, then doing the averages in his head and, according to his best remedial math calculations, approximately twice every three minutes Seth said the exact same thing to his little brother.

“Goddamn, I want a fucking square, wish I had a fucking Zippo with me.”

Even at his tender age Pickles was smart enough to understand that complaining about it, far from helping the situation, was only making it worse on them and he’d wisely kept his mouth shut, although several times he’d been a hair’s breath away from suggesting that if Seth had bothered to steal even a fucking _Bic,_ much less a goddamned Zippo _,_ they could both be puffing on one of his cowboy killers right then.

When they were finally fucking rescued it’d turned out to be by the slip-neighbors of the couple who owned the party barge and, unbeknownst to Seth and Pickles, as soon as they saw the teenage boys emerge from the woods instead of Bob and Carol, or whoever the hell they were expecting to see on the little island the barge was tied up to, they’d radioed back to the marina and the helpful manager had put in a call to the sheriff’s department so that when the boat containing Seth and Pickles, and towing the barge behind it, pulled up to the dock there was already a deputy waiting for them.

They didn’t get arrested or anything, just had to get scolded while they waited on the perp bench for their mom and dad to come pick them up, and Pickles shouldn’t have been surprised when Molly and Cal got there, but he was, godammit, he still was, ‘cause they believed every word Seth had to say. It was Pickles who’d stolen the boat and driven it over to the sandbar, he couldn’t say what would possess his brother to do such a thing, but when Seth realized that Pickles was in trouble over there he’d swam out to him and then stayed with him until help arrived. Pickles was so agog at the monstrosity of the lie he couldn’t even say a word to refute it, he’d ended up getting grounded the entire week while Seth got let off his chores for being so brave in the face of danger when his worthless delinquent little brother needed him.

It occurred to Pickles the next day that his dead body could have been found with Seth’s clear fingerprints around his throat and if he told their parents that Pickles fell in the lake and the marks happened when he’d tried to save him from drowning they’d have bought that hook, line and sinker, too, not because they were _actually_ stupid, Pickles didn’t believe that for a second, but because, when it came to Seth and Pickles, they _willed_ themselves into stupidity.

 He spent the rest of the week with his tiny portable amp hooked up to the hecho-en-Mexico-Strat he’d saved to get from the pawn shop and enacting a ritual that thousands of other thirteen year old aspiring rock gods before him had gone through as well - he played the music as loud as he dared and poured out the angst through his guitar.  



End file.
